PREPARATIONS 9 



of this telegram I remember only that we guessed Leffing- 

 well or some adviser of his had read my paper on the 

 discovery of Greenland and that this invitation to go 

 north was the result. The guess proved to be correct. 



My decision was soon made and I took the first train 

 west. At my talk with Leffingwell it was agreed that I 

 should join his expedition, not at Victoria, British Colum- 

 bia, where the ship was being outfitted and where all 

 the rest of the staff were to gather, but at the mouth of 

 the Mackenzie River. By the map, these places are 

 far apart. But it was the plan of the expedition to sail 

 north through the Pacific and through Bering Straits and 

 then to follow the north coast of Alaska eastward to the 

 whaling station at Herschel Island at the mouth of the 

 Mackenzie River. Herschel Island was the place I sel- 

 ected for joining the expedition, and for several reasons. 



I had already crossed the Atlantic four times and had 

 learnt that one ocean wave looks much like another. 

 From that point of view, at least, there is nothing to be 

 learned from a sea voyage, and I know of nothing more 

 tedious. If I needed a rest I should take a long voyage, 

 but I was not feeling in need of any rest just then. So I 

 proposed to make instead the interesting and instructive 

 overland journey from Boston to the mouth of the Mac- 

 kenzie. The road lies through a country which is even 

 now a wilderness, although in the seventeen years since 

 I made the journey there have been great developments. 

 At that time you might have been a well-informed and 

 well-traveled man without ever having seen or heard of 

 any one who had made this trip. The Indians along 

 the route were "unknown to science," although they had 

 long been in contact with the Hudson's Bay Company fur 

 traders and other wilderness travelers. Mr. Leffingwell 



